The present disclosure relates generally to Web browsers and, in particular, to methods, systems, and computer program products for consolidating Web pages displayed in multiple browsers.
The World Wide Web (WWW), or “Web,” has become a well-known and versatile feature of the Internet. The Web comprises many files or pages of information, distributed across many different servers. Each page is identified by an individual address or “Universal Resource Locator (URL)” which, in turn, denotes both a server machine and a particular file or page on that machine. There may be many pages or URLs resident on a single server.
Typically, to utilize the Web, a user runs a computer program called a Web browser (“browser”) on a client computer system such as a personal computer. The user interacts with the browser to select a particular URL. The interaction causes the browser to send a request for the URL-identified page or file to the URL-identified server. Typically, the server responds to the request by retrieving the requested page and transmitting the data back to the requesting client utilizing hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), a well known protocol in the art. The page received by the client is displayed to the user on the client machine. The client may also cause the server to launch an application, such as a search engine, to search for Web pages relating to particular topics.
Many Web pages also contain one or more references to other Web pages, which need not reside on the same server as the original page. Such references may be activated by selecting particular locations on the screen, e.g., clicking a mouse control button. These references or locations are known as hyperlinks, and are typically flagged by the browser in a particular manner such as through the use of color coding the text link. If a user selects the hyperlinked text, then the referenced page is retrieved and replaces the currently displayed page.
Newer browser technology has extended the traditional technology of requesting and receiving Web pages to include more advanced features. For example, the concept of “tabbed browsing” enables the management and display of multiple Web pages in a single instance of a Web browser. Several different instances of browsers in separate windows, whether the same browser product or different browsers, tend to clutter the desktop by increasing the number of open windows to be managed, and further prevent the convenient interaction of different Web pages within a single window which has made the concept of tabbed sections so popular. Multiple instances of separate Web browsers also increase the demand on system random access memory (RAM) where a single instance with multiple tabbed sections would require less system memory.
The ability to spawn separate instances of browsers often results in multiple instances of browsers displaying one or more Web pages in tabs. A typical computer workstation session might feature three instances of a browser, one of which contains five Web pages displayed in five tabbed windows, while the other two instances of the browser each display a single Web page. Meanwhile, one or more instances of another browser application could also be open, each displaying a single Web page. Additionally, each individual browser window displaying a Web page may contain information on the browsing history of Web pages previously browsed within that stand-alone window or tabbed window. Clearly, managing multiple browser instances and corresponding open Web pages can be a difficult task.
What is needed, therefore, is a way to consolidate multiple Web pages viewed in different instances of one or more different browsers into tabbed viewing in a single instance of a single Web browser.